5.1.2 / Provided to the Reno Gazette-Journal

THEN AND NOW

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In June of 1955, Alex Cushing sent a telegram from the International Olympic Committee meetings in Paris to Dick Skuse, the director of publicity for Squaw Valley, handicapping the young ski resort's chances of being selected to host the 1960 Olympic Winter Games.

Squaw Valley won by two votes over Innsbruck, Austria. Its selection capped a whirlwind trip that started as a publicity stunt but which would ultimately change the face of the Sierra and nearby Reno forever.

In February of 1960, 665 athletes from 30 countries and tens of thousands of spectators from around the world welcomed the eighth Olympic Winter Games to the intimate village of Squaw Valley. The events that unfolded -- from the cozy Olympic village to the first use of electronic timing devices to the gold medal run of the U.S. hockey team -- made history.

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Fifty years later, those who were there remember the games as a special time. They ran Feb. 18-28, 1960.

"It was probably the best Olympics that have ever been," said Linda Meyers-Tikalsky, a two-time Olympian and member of the U.S. National Ski Hall of Fame, who grew up in Bishop, Calif. "The venue was small and everybody was right there together. You could go watch the jumpers, go watch the ice skating, go watch the hockey all within a couple minutes' walk. All the athletes were together."

Bob Beattie, a former U.S. Alpine team coach and longtime ski commentator, agreed:

"It was one of the great amateur events of all time," said Beattie, who attended the Games while a student at the University of Colorado. "It introduced winter sports to American society. It is a terrific story."

Poulsen's vision

The story of the Squaw Valley Olympics actually starts in the 1930s. Wayne Poulsen, a Reno High School student and avid skier, began traveling in the Sierra with Frank Church, a scientist who pioneered snow surveying techniques still in use today. It was in those years that Poulsen first ventured into Squaw Valley.

"The Olympics in Squaw Valley came because of Wayne Poulson," said Bill Briner, who served as one of the official photographers at the 1960 Olympics. "Wayne came into the valley because he was doing some snow survey work and even as a teenager, he said 'I'm going to make that a ski area.'"

In 1943, Poulsen, who had a long career as a pilot for Pan American Airways, bought 600 acres. He and his wife, Sandy, settled in the valley. In 1946, they met Alex Cushing, and a partnership was formed with the Squaw Valley Development Corporation.

In 1948, they broke ground on the resort and it opened on Thanksgiving Day in 1949.

Early on, the partners failed to see eye-to-eye, and eventually, Cushing took over operations of the ski area, while Poulsen maintained ownership of most of the land in the valley.

Cushing's 'moon shot'

In 1954, Cushing saw a small article in his morning newspaper reporting that Reno planned to bid on the 1960 Winter Olympics.

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Cushing immediately saw an opportunity to get publicity for Squaw Valley, which at the time had one lift and two tow ropes to accommodate skiers, by making a bid for the Games himself.

"I had no more interest in getting the Games than the man in the moon," he later told Time magazine. "It was just a way of getting some newspaper space."

In a six-week period, he enlisted the help of California state Sen. Harold Johnson and Gov. Goodie Knight, who pushed legislation that California would guarantee $1 million to help fund the games.

In January 1955, at its meeting in New York City, the U.S. Olympic Committee selected Squaw Valley over Reno; Anchorage, Alaska; Sun Valley, Idaho; Colorado Springs-Aspen, Colo., and Lake Placid, N.Y., to be its recommendation to the International Olympic Committee to host the 1960 Olympics.

The selection was met with skepticism at high levels.

Avery Brundage, the International Olympic Committee Chairman, told Cushing the USOC members had "taken leave of their senses."

Getting the Games

Unbowed, Cushing set his sights on winning the IOC's approval, knowing he faced a longshot bid against such finalists as Innsbruck, Austria; St. Moritz, Switzerland; and Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, all of which had previously hosted Olympics.

Only once, in 1932 at Lake Placid, N.Y., had the Winter Olympics been held in the United States. They had never been held in the western half of North America.

Cushing enlisted the help of an old Harvard classmate, Chicago Tribune reporter George Weller, to help him popularize the notion of a Squaw Games among the voting IOC delegates. That included reaching out to delegates from countries that normally paid little attention to the winter games.

"We did whatever it took -- standing in the Amazon talking to a delegate or talking to a Chinese delegate who had never heard of us," Cushing said in a 1997 interview with the Gazette-Journal. "These were delegates who had never been talked to by anyone before -- but they had a vote and were just as important as the other delegates."

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Cushing also took the added step of having the presentations explaining Squaw's bid proposal printed in Spanish in addition to English and French.

"Alex was a really intelligent guy," Briner said. "He thought things out. One of the first things he realized was a lot of the countries had a right to go to the Paris meetings, but they'd never been there."

Cushing also commissioned a 3,000-pound model of Squaw Valley, showing the proposed venues. It was so large that it didn't fit in the IOC Exhibit Hall and had to be placed in the U.S. Embassy, about a 15-minute walk from the IOC meetings.

What the model showed was an intimate Olympic Village, where the athletes would be housed in a central area, and all the venues (except the Nordic courses) in a central location.

A controversy erupted at the meeting when a group of European delegates claimed Squaw was a "business corporation," and not eligible to stage an Olympiad, citing an Olympic rule that the games can only be hosted by a town or municipality.

Heated arguments delayed the final vote by five hours, according to a United Press International report, but Cushing was able to prevail by giving what IOC Chancellor Otto Mayer of Switzerland called "a brilliant explanation of municipal organization in the United States."

Cushing also had the aid of Joseph Marillac, the ski school instructor at Squaw who had great respect from the European delegates.

"He had worked in the French underground in World War II," Briner said. "He was captured by the Nazis three times and he escaped three times. The second time he escaped, he did it by climbing a sheer mountain. The French really loved him. When it came down to cracking the nut, we were a couple votes short. He got a couple more votes. That's what put us over the top."

The final vote was 32-30 for Squaw Valley over Innsbruck.

Preparation

With the Games secured, it became the task of the California Olympic Commission to acquire land and construct the venues.

While Cushing operated the ski area, much of the land on which he wanted venues and parking was owned by Wayne and Sandy Paulson, who said they only learned of Squaw Valley's successful bid by reading about it in the newspaper.

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Especially alarming to the Paulsons was the plan for huge paved parking lots to accommodate Olympic crowds.

Ultimately, the disputes were settled with the commission agreeing to purchase 28.2 acres of land from the Paulsons and lease 148 acres for parking areas that would be on compacted snow rather than being paved.

Construction included four three-story buildings to house the athletes and support staff, an 8,000-seat arena, ski jump area, speed skating oval, improved access roads and much more. In all, the construction cost for the 1960 Olympics was about $15 million, with the funding coming primarily from the state of California and the federal government. The state of Nevada and corporate donors also provided funding.

Preparations for the Games stretched into Nevada as the Reno airport was expanded to accommodate international flights and Interstate 80 was widened to accommodate the added traffic.

"We probably had as many or more of the international groups coming through our airport as they did in San Francisco," said Harry Spencer, a longtime public relations executive in Reno, who was with the Mapes Hotel at the time of the Olympics. "Economically, it was a hell of a boost for the area."

"Obviously, it all started off with Alex Cushing getting the bid," Spencer said.

In his 1997 interview with the Gazette-Journal, Cushing, who died in 2006 at age 92, still beamed with pride over the games, particularly the concept of the Olympic Village.

"We did a wonderful thing," he said. "A lot of people said this was the last of the real Olympics."